Thursday, 3 April 2014

One of the good things about having a boy is I get to do boy stuff, having spent my whole life doing girl stuff, being a girl, perhaps I'm a tomboy at heart. As Erbie loves anything with wheels, buses used to be wheelie up there on the list and even though he is 5 now and in Year 1 at primary they still have a little place in his heart, so booked us tickets to go to the London Transport (showing my age there, I mean Transport For London) Acton Depot Bus Museum open day. It was a lovely clear March morning and we got there by tube.

Walk this way

Walk this way - or this way! Erbie steams ahead, dressed in bus red trousers.

Outside the depot

The depot - a great hangar of a building, houses a historical collection of TFL underground trains, which you can walk through and alongside, even sit in the drivers seat...

Inside the depot

There were also activities for children, and some rather watchable working lego train sets.

Lego train set

Erbie spent a long time watching the lego train set, we went back 5 times.

Manned by a Star Wars fan

There is also a room of signage, mmmm signage, I have a vested interest, having been a graphic designer before mummydom.

Remember these.

An original underground train, look wooden floors and painted seat.

A Victorian delivery train with milk churns

Ah, public transport

Bus man

Lovely old bus

Original Routemaster

Outside were a collection of more recent buses and articles for sale, you could even buy old luggage racks, they'd look good in a converted warehouse kitchen.

Luggage rack anyone

Signs for sale

Clocking in

Inside there was also a plethora of memorabilia, clocking-in clocks and station clocks, old escalators and huge bits of engine amongst, signs and parts of tunnel!

Station clocks

In the shop you could purchase merchandise made from iconic seat fabrics, coasters, bags, mugs, tea towels, you name it with the tube map on. I couldn't resist the coasters and got a tea towel for each of my siblings no longer living in London.

Cushion covers

Cushion covers, belts and bags made from tube seat fabric.

belts and bags

An old wooden escalator

After the Kings Cross Fire in 1987, the wooden escalators have been more or less removed and replaced with safer metal ones. And of course smoking on the underground has long been banned.